Iraq continues to dominate the thoughts of German commentators on Tuesday, with most agreeing upon one thing: the elections are a victory, but not a particularly convincing one.

The conservative daily Die Welt compares the Iraq vote -- in which 60 percent of Iraqis took part, despite threats of violence from rebel (mainly Sunni) groups -- to that of the first vote in South Africa in 1994 after the repeal of apartheid. Compared to the excitement over the South African vote, Sunday's elections were certainly "muted," writes the paper. Still two main points can be culled from the results. "The fact that the Sunnis stayed away from the elections is admittedly a partial failure of the coalition troops," it says. "But above all it is a relic of a dictatorship. The second sensational part of these elections is that none of the Shiite lists wants an Islamic republic. Secular, national, democratic -- this is what their programs laid out. All of the neighboring Arab states -- whose citizens can only dream of such a government -- looked on with great unease."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also praises Iraqis and the vote, but insists everyone should not be celebrating prematurely. One thing the vote did, it says, was break an outdated stereotype about the Arab world. "That so many voted speaks for the courage of the Iraqis and refutes claims that Arabs or Muslims are not interested in democracy," the paper writes. Still, it says, the election is only a first step, especially since "Iraq has as little experience with a functioning democracy as the other nations in the region." Like Die Welt, it views the Sunnis as the key and says their boycott of the election and the continuing terrorism will be the biggest challenges for the new Shiite-dominated government. "Measures must be taken to win the trust of the Sunnis who did not vote," it insists. And, while it gives the United States credit for toppling Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, it hesitates to praise Washington too much. In fact, it uses the opportunity to take yet another swing at President George W. Bush's foreign policy. "It is true this election was only possible because Washington toppled the despot," it said. "But that's as far as the American truth can stretch. Bush, whose reasons for going to war disappeared in the desert sand, may be rejoicing. But who would want his method of action to become the accepted norm? Even this election does not justify the US strategy of improving the world via a war of aggression."

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung oozes the sort of pessimism Germans are known for, scowling, "The simple truth that the Iraqis have rejected terrorism says too little about voters' motives and hopes and even less about the significance of the result for the future of Iraq." The election, it insists is a pyrrhic one, with almost as much lost as gained. "Pyrrhus (Ancient king of Epirus in Northern Greek renowned for winning battles at a high cost) was not an Iraqi. And yet the world should be careful about rejoicing for democracy. The victory for political Islam in Algeria did not end in pluralism."

In addition to Iraq, trans-Atlantic relations are once again set to catch the eye of commentators. Bush is coming to Europe in late February to try to start patching things up in the strained relationship. But on Tuesday, an editorial in the Financial Times Deutschland by the politically conservative former special assistant to Bush, David Frum, gets the ball rolling.

The piece starts with an anecdote describing the contrast between United States and European reactions to Germany's stated plan to try to get a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The reaction from the Americans, Frum writes, was complete boredom. "For the Europeans, though, it was as if (Germany) had dropped a concrete block on their toes." What are the lessons to be learned out of these contrasting reactions? The first, says Frum, is that, even faced with mountains of evidence to the contrary, the United States is finding it difficult to accept that US-European relations have changed radically since the end of the Cold War. "Americans continue to believe that the Europe and the Germany of 2005 are the same as those of 1985." It is time, he argues, to address this misconception and, more importantly, to try to reverse the widening gulf between the continents -- a gulf, Frum argues, that is being pried wider open by the Europeans, not by Americans.